■ China
Japan sends experts
Tokyo has sent experts to investigate drums of poison gas thought to have been left by the Japanese army after World War II that sickened dozens of people in China's northeast last week, a Japanese official said yesterday. Two people were "close to death" with breathing problems after exposure to the gas in the city of Qiqihar, the state newspaper China Daily said. It said 32 others were hospitalized, including one man with chemical burns on 95 percent of his body. The poison, believed to be mustard gas, was released Aug. 4 after construction workers unearthed the five drums at a building site.
■ Australia
Governor-general sworn in
Queen Elizabeth's new representative in Australia was sworn in yesterday, three months after her previous envoy was forced to resign in the wake of two sex scandals. Major-General Michael Jeffery, a decorated Vietnam War hero, was appointed Australia's 24th governor-general in a formal ceremony at the national parliament. Jeffery replaces Peter Hollingworth, a former Anglican archbishop, who left the job amid public anger over his protection of a pedophile priest in the 1990s and over a 40-year-old, unproven rape case that was eventually dismissed.
■ Japan
Abudction issue to be raised
Japan plans to raise the abduction of its citizens by North Korea at six-way talks to be held late this month in Beijing on the crisis over Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions, a Japanese official said yesterday. But the official said the issue of the abductions, which took place decades ago but have dogged relations between Japan and the reclusive communist state, would be resolved bilaterally. "This is an important issue so this will be raised," the official quoted Japanese chief Cabinet secretary Yasuo Fukuda as saying at the end of a three-day visit to Beijing. North Korea has admitted kidnapping 13 Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s to help train spies, saying eight of them subsequently died.
■ Australia
Penis enlargement blasted
Men who want their penises surgically enlarged are showing signs of profound psychological disturbance as well as risking infection, the president of the Australian Society of Plastic Surgery said yesterday. Dr Alfred Lewis said that the same could not be said of women seeking breast enlargement. "Breasts are public organs and the penis isn't -- it's a private organ," he told reporters at an international plastic surgery conference in Sydney. Lewis said he would personally never perform a penis enlargement. "It's a completely and absolutely unnecessary operation which I think, in the patient requesting it, is showing a fairly profound psychological disturbance," he said.
■ Pakistan
Man kills relatives
A man sneaked into his brother's home and shot to death his sister-in-law and his four teenage nieces, apparently because he believed two of the nieces had disgraced the family's honor by having affairs, police said yesterday. The man, Shaukat Ahmed, shot each of the women in the head at close range Sunday, said police spokesperson Mirza Liaqat Ali. The brother was away from home at the time of the attack, which took place in Muridke, 30km north of Lahore. Only the eldest niece, 18-year-old Misbah, made it to a hospital, where she died during emergency care.
■ Venezuela
Mother strongly sacrificial
Venezuelan mother Jenny Navarro has sold off her television and video player to keep her family afloat -- now she is offering to sell one of her kidneys for US$150,000 to pay for her children's education. "I'm willing to do whatever I can for my kids," said Navarro, an unemployed systems technician who shares a room with her three children in a poor neighborhood in eastern Caracas and is struggling to survive the recession battering her country. "It's getting desperate. They are not going to miss their education because of me," she said in an interview. Venezuela, the world's No. 5 oil exporter, is caught in the worst economic downturn in its history amid political conflict over the rule of leftist President Hugo Chavez.
■ Colombia
Truck bomb wounds 17
A truck bomb exploded near a radio station in central Colombia on Sunday, wounding at least 17 people, police said. Authorities blamed rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the attack in the town of San Martin, near the city of Villavicencio in Meta state. Jose Arnulfo, the police commander in Meta state, told Canal Uno Television that between 17 and 20 people were wounded in the blast, which severely damaged Super Radio, a gas station and several houses. Authorities offered 20 million pesos (about US$7,000) for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.
■ France
Farmer's leader steps down
France's best-known farmer, Jose Bove, said Sunday that he will step down next year as spokesman of his radical union and anti-globalization movement, the Farmers' Confederation. Bove, who gained fame as an anti-globalization activist in 1999 by ransacking a McDonald's restaurant under construction in southern France, said he would leave the job in April. Speaking during a massive protest against the World Trade Organization, Bove suggested he didn't want to continue to dominate the group. ``It would be very dangerous to personalize the movement,'' he said. The Farmers' Confederation promotes traditional agriculture and opposes genetically modified produce and fast food.
■ Outer space
Couple marries via satellite
A cosmonaut circling 380km above the earth on the International Space Station married his fiance in Texas on Sunday in the first space wedding. Peering into each other's eyes via a satellite video hookup at NASA's Johnson Space Center, the two exchanged vows before 200 people in a ceremony that ended with bride Ekaterina Dmitriev blowing new Ukrainian husband Yuri Malenchenko a long distance kiss.
■ United States
Dancer Hines dies of cancer
Actor and dancer Gregory Hines, 57, who tap-danced his way to fame in movies such as The Cotton Club and White Nights, died of cancer on Saturday, his publicist said Sunday. Hines, who won a Tony award for best actor in the musical Jelly's Last Jam, was born in New York and learned to tap-dance at the age of three. Hines and his brother Maurice performed together in the musical revue Eubie! in 1978 and in Broadway's Sophisticated Ladies. On television, he had his own series in 1997 called The Gregory Hines Show. Gregory Oliver Hines was born on Feb. 14, 1946, in New York City.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
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